Question: I have often heard you say that God does not bestow spiritual gifts through physical means but only through spiritual means. This is logical, but I have a question. Why then did Jesus tell His apostles in Mark:9:29And he said unto them, This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.See All..., when they were unable to drive out a particularly stubborn unclean spirit, that “this kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting”? This seems to contradict your position.

Response: Prayer is certainly not a “physical means.” Nor is prayer a magic technique that frightens demons away. Prayer is petitioning God to intervene, while at the same time submitting to His will rather than trying to impose one’s will upon Him. Nor could fasting be a “physical means” unless it were the direct or indirect cause of obtaining answers to prayer.

Fasting has no such powers and does not appease God or earn from Him an answer to prayer. In prayer man humbles himself before God. Fasting adds to that humility (Psalm:35:13But as for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth: I humbled my soul with fasting; and my prayer returned into mine own bosom.See All...). It also demonstrates one’s earnestness by setting aside the normal desire and need for food, and the time involved in eating, in order to more completely devote oneself to petitioning God.

The humility of submission to and dependence upon God for His mercy is further demonstrated by clothing oneself in “sackcloth and ashes,” as practiced at times in the past along with fasting (Esther:4:1When Mordecai perceived all that was done, Mordecai rent his clothes, and put on sackcloth with ashes, and went out into the midst of the city, and cried with a loud and a bitter cry;See All..., 3; Jeremiah:6:26O daughter of my people, gird thee with sackcloth, and wallow thyself in ashes: make thee mourning, as for an only son, most bitter lamentation: for the spoiler shall suddenly come upon us.See All...; Daniel:9:3And I set my face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes:See All...; Jonah:3:6For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.See All...; Matthew:11:21Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.See All...). Scripture says, “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much” (James:5:16Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.See All...). Fasting is a mark of fervency; it is not a physical means of obtaining a spiritual gift.

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